


Worst Kept Secret

by tonia_barone



Series: Fellowship of the Flash [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Captain David Singh is a good cop, Everyone knows who the Flash is, Gen, Introspection, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, So's the rest of CCPD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 03:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10890561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonia_barone/pseuds/tonia_barone
Summary: People really don't give the CCPD enough credit when it comes to the Flash's identity.





	Worst Kept Secret

**Author's Note:**

> I actually came up with this while writing my other fic, The Facts of Life. Barry Allen works with cops, some of whom are theoretically excellent detectives. We already know from canon that Barry has trouble keeping his identity secret from his friends, family, and random bad guys. Are we really supposed to believe that nobody else in the station aside from Joe has figured out that Barry’s the Flash?

The world since STAR Labs exploded has become a very strange place.  Once normal men and women suddenly have extraordinary abilities, which some use for good but far more seem to be using to commit crime.  David Singh didn’t have children, but he imagined he had an idea how Detective Joe West felt when his foster son, Barry Allen, was struck by lightning that night and fell into a coma.  As the youngest person in the building, David had taken a special interest in Barry.  While nobody would dare say or do anything to Barry while Joe was around, that didn’t mean that things didn’t get said outside of the detective’s hearing.  As Captain, it was David’s duty to make sure the hazing didn’t get out of hand.

The entire station celebrated when Barry woke up, and they threw a party when he came back to work a few days later.  David quietly asked Joe if Barry shouldn’t be off longer to recover, but Joe said that Barry insisted that he’d slept for the last nine months and wanted to get back to work.  Reluctantly, David allowed it.

A few days later, David began noticing _oddities_ around the station.  In particular, around one CSI Barry Allen.

Barry Allen was never what one would call ‘punctual’.  On his best days, Barry was maybe ten minutes late.  Any other employee, David would be down their throat about it.  Barry, however, had always been a special case.  For one, his work ethic when he _was_ in his lab was excellent.  For another, David had watched the young man grow up along with Joe’s natural child, Iris.  Simply put, David had a soft spot for Barry.  Thankfully, no one else called him on it. 

While Barry’s tardiness never really got better, he was rarely more than ten minutes late anymore.  By itself, that wouldn’t be too odd.  Except that Barry was also getting his reports in mostly ‘on time’—‘on time’ meaning only about twenty minutes late instead of an hour or two—and the level of detail in them was astounding.  Barry’s reports had always been good work—see the above as a reason David was so lenient with him—but now it was like he had taken hours extra to look over everything.  At first, David thought that perhaps Barry was pulling late nights to make up for being in the coma, but after checking with the desk sergeant and the security footage in Barry’s lab, David found that not to be the case.  In actuality, Barry seemed to spend even _less_ time in the lab than before the coma; yet his work never suffered so again, David allowed it.

***

About the same time that David began looking through the security footage of the lab—which took several days, what with his other responsibilities—there was a quiet murmur around the bullpen.

The senior desk sergeant had noticed the same thing that David had noticed: that one Barry Allen was a little more punctual, but seemed to spend even less time in the lab.  While talking with a couple of her friends around the break room, she discovered that quite a few officers had noticed a strange breeze blowing through the precinct periodically, usually followed by a yellow spark seen out of the corner of the eye.  Others had items start to slip from their hands, only to right themselves mysteriously.  Odd how these instances started not too long after Allen’s return to the precinct.

Something else that the desk sergeant noticed, but decided to keep quiet about was those very same flashes of yellow sparks she saw in the security footage of Allen’s lab on the third floor.  Almost too quick to see, it was like trying to spot a phantom, or a trick of the light.  Even slowed down, the sparks were barely visible on the footage.  She didn’t mention them when the Captain asked for the footage from Allen’s lab; it was a flicker of light, not someone breaking into the lab to sabotage it.

Another murmur going around the precinct was the mysterious Streak that was being spotted around the city.  Faster than a camera could see, except for a red blur surrounded by yellow lightning.  The kind of lightning the desk sergeant, and others, saw occasionally around the precinct.

The desk sergeant was out with some coworkers when one of them said what they were all thinking: “The Streak is one of us, isn’t he?”

A quiet wave of agreement flowed over the group as each and every one of them took a long drink from their glasses.

Then someone else asked, “Did anybody pay attention to when the Streak first appeared?”

“Early October, I think.”

“Yeah, yeah it was.  I remember because it wasn’t too long after Allen came back to work.”

Everybody mulled on this for a few minutes.

“Anybody else notice how squirrely Allen seemed when that General was in last week?  I don’t think I saw Allen in the same room as the General unless the Captain made him after that first introduction.”

Someone else pointed out something they were trying not to think about, “Wasn’t the Streak seen fighting with the military over something?”

Everyone made sounds of agreement before taking another collective drink.

“I, uh, I saw the Streak come out of STAR Labs a couple weeks ago.  Back when that weird gas metahuman was causing a ruckus.”

A small pause, then, “Wasn’t that the place that Joe had Allen moved to after he kept crashing at the hospital?”

More agreement, more drinking.

So it went for another half hour.  Before they broke up for the night, the desk sergeant leaned into the middle of the table and gave each of her coworkers a Look.  “All we have is circumstantial evidence, nothing concrete, but even if we did…Allen’s one of our own.  Get me?”  _And we take care of our own_ , went unspoken but clearly heard by all.

After everyone gave their assent, the coworkers went their separate ways.  Two days later, the online blog following the Streak officially named him the Flash.  That day Barry came into work with his right hand and wrist in a brace, claiming that he strained it moving a cabinet at home.  Everybody nodded, and nobody said a thing about the fact that Barry Allen couldn’t lie his way out of a wet paper bag.

***

David kept an ear to the ground, and an eye on what went on in his station.  He was a seasoned cop of nearly two decades, half of that spent as a detective.  The Captain noticed when, slowly, his officers and detectives began covering for Barry, and the Flash.  There were still some hold outs who spoke out against the Flash, but they were a shrinking minority.  The most outspoken of those was Detective Eddie Thawne, Joe’s new partner.  This amused David greatly, because aside from the senior desk sergeant, Joe West was the Flash’s greatest supporter in the station. 

Months passed, and David could only shake his head and wonder at how Barry seemed to honestly believe that he was keeping his identity as the Flash a secret from a building full of cops.  There were times he wasn’t even subtle about leaving after something happened.  Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the officers in the know closing ranks around Barry’s identity, it’d have been common knowledge ages ago.

David really should have a talk with Barry about leaving crime scenes before fully processing them to chase metahumans.

Sometime around the end of March, Eddie finally joined those in the know and stopped his single-minded crusade against metahumans.  That was a relief to David, because by this point he was beginning to suspect he might be one as well, and that could be awkward for their work relationship.  For the last few weeks, David had been having strange dreams where he’s paralyzed while trying to protect Joe from Mark Mardon.  It wasn't the first time he’s had odd dreams since STAR Labs exploded, but it was the first time they haven’t come true, so he was a little confused by them. 

Now it was the late April and David couldn't wait for things to calm down.  He looked up at a knock on his door.  “Joe, come in.  What can I do for you?”

“Hey, Captain, I was hoping I could take the next few days off.  Something’s come up that I gotta take care of.”

David remembered the dream he’d had just last night, of Joe asking for time off and then something big about Dr. Harrison Wells.  He reached for the leave form Joe was holding out and quickly signed it.  “Sure, Joe.  Let me know if you need anything.”  He put it aside to go to HR later.

“Thanks, Captain.”

David watched him leave with a heavy heart.  He hoped that Joe found whatever he was looking for.  Now to get back to the evaluation forms he was going over.  David caught a flash of lightning out of the corner of his eye and sighed.  What he really needed to do was teach Barry the meaning of ‘subtle’. 


End file.
